DVD Review: Case Histories Starring Jason Isaacs

The policeman with the troubled past as a plot line for television shows and movies has been used to the point where its coming close to being a cliche. The worst of these has the cop nurturing some dark secret resulting in him bordering on a brooding sociopath who exacts bloody revenge on the criminal class. If I have to sit though one more flashback of a young hopeful cop coming home to find his wife and infant daughter slaughtered by a junkie looking for the money for a quick fix I might explode. You can pretty much be guaranteed at some point finding the cop either sitting in a bar staring into a drink or exploding in a senseless range.

What truly strains my credulity about these plots is in the world of modern policing most forces frown on officers having personal agendas influencing their behaviour. Not only do they now have police psychologists who would be quick to relieve anyone so inclined of their duties, the last thing they want are accusations of excessive force or police brutality screwing up a conviction. Anyway, why is it a cop’s answer to his troubled past always violence? There are other ways people react to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Thankfully it turns out there are script writers who understand and have started to create characters who aren’t quite so simplistic. As is often the case the best of these characters are being created for British television shows with the most recent example being the six part series called Case Histories. Now available as a two disc DVD set from Acorn Media, it was adapted from the works of British crime writer Kate Atkinson featuring the character of Private Investigator Jackson Brodie. Brodie, portrayed brilliantly by Jason Isaacs (Best known as Lucious Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies) has previously been a soldier and then a cop. While he deals in the bread and butter of private investigation work, checking on cheating spouses for insecure partners, he seems to have a particular affinity for missing persons and cases where the trail has long since gone cold. We also learn early on that he is haunted by a memory from his childhood. It turns out his sister was murdered and his older brother was so guilt ridden he attempted suicide and has ended up catatonic in a nursing home.

While it sounds like we’re headed into the typical brooding cop type thing mentioned earlier, the series manages to avoid that pitfall. Instead of having Brodie losing himself in a glass at the end of each day, the fact that his sister’s killer has never been caught dictates his choice of cases. The other thing we quickly learn about him is he doesn’t wallow in self pity. Instead the memories of his sister’s death seems to have increased his sense of compassion towards both those who are victims of crimes and their families. He might never find out who killed his sister or have been able to protect her, but he’s not going to let another murder go unsolved, allow someone to be victimized or to suffer needlessly.

While this white knight riding to the rescue sounds like it shortened his career as a police officer, we’re never really told why he left the force. However,we do know the only cop he’s on good terms with, DC Louise Munroe, played by Amanda Abbington. We do find out during one of his visits to Munroe at work that he somehow managed to have two cops suspended for apparently not pursuing the capture of a rapist as thoroughly as Brodie would have liked. Whether that happened while he was a cop or more recently isn’t made clear, however it does explain why uniformed officers casually call him “wanker” whenever they see him.

However strained his relations are with the rest of the police, and no matter how much he might piss her off periodically, Munroe not only has a great deal of respect for Jackson’s skills as an investigator, she also covers for him on those times he skirts around the edges of the law. As the series progresses the nature of their relationship actually becomes more not less confusing. Both of them become involved with other people, but they always seem to be drawn to each other, and you have the feeling with a little bit of encouragement they could become a couple. There’s very little said overtly, but both actors are wonderful at communicating what’s between the lines through the manner in which they each behave around the other.

It’s like they both realize any relationship between the two of them wouldn’t be casual, and they’d better well be damn sure about it. Both have had previous marriages and each has a child. It’s not said what happened to Munroe’s, but it’s pretty obvious that Brodie’s wife just couldn’t put up with his work hours. It quickly becomes apparent that as far as he’s concerned there’s no off duty hours when he’s on a case. He even takes his five year old daughter with him when he goes off to interview people, which thrills his ex-wife no end when she finds out.

One of the great things about this series is the arc we’re able to watch the character of Brodie travel. When we first meet him the death of his sister dominates his life. When his ex-wife announces she and their daughter will be moving to New Zealand for a year, he freaks. It’s not just because he will be separated from his daughter whom he loves, but because he can’t shake the belief something horrible will happen to her if he’s not there to protect her. Even after he finally resigns himself to their going, he still can’t let go. It hasn’t helped that the cases he’d been working on prior to them leaving were two involving young girls who had gone missing thirty and about sixteen years ago respectively and two unsolved murders.

However its the last case he takes on in the series, after his daughter has already left for New Zealand, that helps him to finally begin to resolve his own issues. After a teenaged girl saves his life when he’s injured in a train wreck, she convinces him to investigate the disappearance of the woman she baby sits for. It turns out this same woman had only just escaped being murdered as a child after watching her mother and daughter be cut down in front of her by a knife wielding crazy. She had managed to escape by hiding in the the tall grass near to where the murder took place. It was there she was found by a young soldier named Jackson Brodie who was part of the search party looking for her.

Now all these years later he’s searching for her again and while he finds her and brings her home, he also sees how she was able to protect herself. Not everybody is a victim, and he begins to realize he can’t and shouldn’t try to be everybody’s saviour. Sure he should do what he can for his daughter, but he also has to let go. Isaacs depiction of Brodie’s transformation is so gradual you barely notice it happening over the course of the six episodes. However, when you look back at how he was when we first met him and compare that to the man we see on the television screen in the final frames of the series, it’s like a twenty ton weight has been taken off his shoulders.

All through the series we’ve seen him running for both exercise and an attempt to run away from his past. However hard he runs though, his mind can’t help but travelling back to the day he saw his sister’s corpse being found. In the last frames of the show we see him crest a hill while running and looking around himself with a smile on his face. Case Histories is not your typical crime show and Jackson Brodie is not your typical private investigator. The cases he takes on are intriguing and following along with his investigations is as interesting, if not more, than any other series of this type. However it’s the study of Brodie the character and Jason Isaacs’s performance which elevates this show into a category all its own.

The two disc set contains all six episodes of the series plus a fifteen minute bonus, making of , short. While there’s no real startling revelations in the feature, the interviews with Isaacs, Amanda Abbington and author Atkinson are interesting for the perspectives they offer on the characters in the show and the author’s intent with creating the series. However, it’s not the extra features that make Case Histories special, it’s the show itself. If you weren’t able to catch it on your local Public Broadcasting Station recently, than you need to watch it now. It ranks right up there as one of the best mystery/crime shows to come out of Britain in the last few years.

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About Richard Marcus

Richard Marcus is the author of two books commissioned by Ulysses Press, "What Will Happen In Eragon IV?" (2009) and "The Unofficial Heroes Of Olympus Companion". Aside from Blogcritics his work has appeared around the world in publications like the German edition of Rolling Stone Magazine and the multilingual web site Qantara.de. He has been writing for Blogcritics.org since 2005 and has published around 1900 articles at the site.